The neural substrate of gesture recognition

Villarreal, Mirta F.; Fridman, Esteban A.; Amengual, Alejandra; Falasco, German; Gerscovich, E. R.; Ulloa, Erlinda R.; Leiguarda, R

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.03.004

Cited by 104 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…In accordance with previous work [5,24] a fronto-parietal circuit related to language or better to linking meaning to symbols in a modalityindependent way may be used for comprehension of symbolic gesture and corresponding word. In contrast, motor circuits including primary motor area are likely activated to comprehend action words used in actual and even metaphoric context [8,25].…”

Section: Article In Presssupporting

confidence: 59%

“…Intransitive gestures are communicative signals and can be emblematic, that is symbols or signs expressed by intentional bodily movements or request gestures which convey request to initiate, maintain, or terminate various types of interaction. Villarreal and colleagues [5] assessed cortical activity during recognition of communicative gestures containing symbolic connotations (e.g., The embodied theory of language assumes that language comprehension makes use of the neural system ordinarily recruited for action control [6]. Focusing on spoken language material related to concrete actions, recent neurophysiological studies have shown that premotor regions are involved in language processing [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does comprehension of symbolic gestures and corresponding-in-meaning words make use of motor simulation?

Campione¹,

Stefani²,

Innocenti³

et al. 2014

Behavioural Brain Research

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• We searched for the processes used to understand the meaning of emblems and words.• TMS was applied to motor cortex during observation/listening of gestures and words.• As controls meaningless gestures, pseudo-words and a still actor were presented.• Motor cortex was activated by presentation of meaningless signals only.• Understanding emblems and corresponding words probably use semantic circuits.

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Section: Article In Presssupporting

confidence: 59%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does comprehension of symbolic gestures and corresponding-in-meaning words make use of motor simulation?

Campione¹,

Stefani²,

Innocenti³

et al. 2014

Behavioural Brain Research

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“…Neuroimaging studies in healthy subjects show that the IFG is reliably activated during the processing of spoken, written, and signed language at the levels we have focused upon here, i.e., comprehension of words or of simple syntactic structures (6,13,14). While some neuroimaging studies of symbolic gesture recognition have not reported inferior frontal activation (9, 10), many others have detected significant responses for observation of either pantomimes (15)(16)(17) or emblems (8,11,17).…”

Section: Shared Activations For Perception Of Symbolic Gesture and Spmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…A number of these studies have provided important information about the surface features of this gestural class, evaluated in the context of praxis (7), or in studies of action observation or imitation (8), often to assess the role of the mirror neuron system in pantomime perception. To date, however, no functional imaging study has directly compared comprehension of spoken language and pantomimes that convey identical semantic information.…”

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confidence: 99%

Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system

Gannon

Emmorey

et al. 2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

232

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Symbolic gestures, such as pantomimes that signify actions (e.g., threading a needle) or emblems that facilitate social transactions (e.g., finger to lips indicating ''be quiet''), play an important role in human communication. They are autonomous, can fully take the place of words, and function as complete utterances in their own right. The relationship between these gestures and spoken language remains unclear. We used functional MRI to investigate whether these two forms of communication are processed by the same system in the human brain. Responses to symbolic gestures, to their spoken glosses (expressing the gestures' meaning in English), and to visually and acoustically matched control stimuli were compared in a randomized block design. General Linear Models (GLM) contrasts identified shared and unique activations and functional connectivity analyses delineated regional interactions associated with each condition. Results support a model in which bilateral modality-specific areas in superior and inferior temporal cortices extract salient features from vocalauditory and gestural-visual stimuli respectively. However, both classes of stimuli activate a common, left-lateralized network of inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions in which symbolic gestures and spoken words may be mapped onto common, corresponding conceptual representations. We suggest that these anterior and posterior perisylvian areas, identified since the mid-19th century as the core of the brain's language system, are not in fact committed to language processing, but may function as a modality-independent semiotic system that plays a broader role in human communication, linking meaning with symbols whether these are

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“…The available neurometabolic literature [5], [8], [16], [25], [30], [33] and [34] provides evidence that a fronto-parietal mirror system, including the inferior frontal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule and superior temporal sulcus, is involved in action coding and comprehension in humans. The evidence comes from the observation that goal-directed vs. non-goal-directed actions (e.g., picking up vs. just reaching), or more salient (e.g., grasping a glass to drink) vs. less salient (e.g., grasping a glass to clean up) actions, specifically activate the mirror neuron circuits.…”

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confidence: 99%

RP and N400 ERP components reflect semantic violations in visual processing of human actions

Proverbio

Riva

2009

Neuroscience Letters

128

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Since their discovery during the late decades of the last century, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have contributed greatly to understanding the neural bases of cognitive processes and especially of language [14], [13] and [12]. In particular, the N400 component, a large negative deflection peaking at about 400 ms over centro-parietal scalp areas, has been related to semantic integration [1] and lexical access processes [11] and [15]. It is a rather well established notion that N400 is sensitive to word frequency, class, concreteness, orthographic neighbours, close probability, semantic relatedness, contextual constraint, prototypicity (see an exhaustive review in [10]), idiomaticity [2], age of language acquisition [26] and language proficiency [27], with higher amplitudes to less familiar or expected items. N400 neural generators seem to include the left temporal cortex (both posterior (VWFA) and anterior) [24] and [21], the left inferior frontal gyrus and the angular gyrus [15]. The study of N400 behaviour has helped us to understand how meanings are accessed, stored and integrated in the lexical semantic system. It has also been demonstrated that N400 is sensitive not only to word meanings but also to violations of world knowledge learned during everyday life [4] or to semantic violations in deaf native signers [23].However, to our knowledge, the observation of linguistic components has not been applied so far to the study of gesture coding, for which it is known that there are permanent representational units in the inferior parietal and inferior frontal cortex. Indeed, apart from communicative gestures such as sign language (e.g., ASl or BSL), goal-directed gestures whose intent is not communicative are also recognized as unitary meaningful units by premotor and somatosensory mirror neurons. Indeed a left inferior parietal lesion (BA40) is associated with the inability to recognize or imitate a gesture (such as brushing teeth or flipping a coin) or to perform skilled actions (such as lighting a cigarette or making coffee), which is a deficit called apraxia (the linguistic counterpart of this might correspond to a posterior aphasia). Interestingly, an ERP study on ASL processing reported greater amplitude signals originating in the parietal cortices of native than of late signers [22]. [34] provides evidence that a fronto-parietal mirror system, including the inferior frontal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule and superior temporal sulcus, is involved in action coding and comprehension in humans. The evidence comes from the observation that goal-directed vs. non-goal-directed actions (e.g., picking up vs. just reaching), or more salient (e.g., grasping a glass to drink) vs. less salient (e.g., grasping a glass to clean up) actions, specifically activate the mirror neuron circuits. Human data are paralleled by neurophysiological recordings of macaque mirror neuron activity showing, e.g., a differential neural coding in area F5 for grasping to eat vs. grasping to throw away. However, no clear and dir...

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The neural substrate of gesture recognition

Cited by 104 publications

References 95 publications

Does comprehension of symbolic gestures and corresponding-in-meaning words make use of motor simulation?

Does comprehension of symbolic gestures and corresponding-in-meaning words make use of motor simulation?

Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system

RP and N400 ERP components reflect semantic violations in visual processing of human actions

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